Whose Services Are Planning To Be The Most Reliable? PS Plus vs Xbox Live Gold

"For the longest time, games consoles have been the number one place to enjoy gaming in your household. As time has passed we have seen improved AI, graphics, ways of displaying a story and even the integrity of the console itself. The Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii U have transcended to become more than just games consoles as they can allow you to listen to music, watch movies, check what you missed on TV and even go onto the internet. As the next generation is on the horizon and another evolution of gaming is coming with it, should we now class games consoles as services instead of just gaming devices?"

In terms of reliability I say XBL Gold, but that could easily change next gen because more people will be subscribing to PS+ and it's expected Sony will be investing more on their online services which was already good considering it was free for a long time

Also, people shouldn't equate PSN on PS3 to PSN on PS4. Those who do are in denial. And before anyone brings up the hack from 2 years ago, it was Sony themselves who took down PSN to make it stronger. There are tons of improvements being made for PS4. Sony is investing on stronger network infrastructure.

A funny little tidbit. Sony actually helped create the original XBL that debuted with the original 360. Marinate on that for a bit. ... Okay, so I preordered the PS4 because it's a beast of a system with some of the main specs related to core gaming being, even if marginally, better that the Xbone. In terms of PS+, I'm in love with the new features, and there's enough support for it to be just an awesome service.

With that said, I think XBL will simply be better.

Confused yet?

I can't purchase the PS4 for being a hardware-superior, and then ignore the fact that MS's Azure platform which will house XBL and MS's online gaming. It will be beast-like in terms of server-side speed and reliability. Plus, there's the fact that MS has been getting money for XBL specifically for over a decade now, while Sony is just getting on it's feet with its pay service.

Based on historical evidence i am highly inclined to say Xbox Live. With PS plus revenue though perhaps sony has already started to bolster their online service to better compete with Xbox Live. Personally i have played both and don't really have any problem playing online on either. However PS4 slow download speeds coupled with having to install and update and all that crap most of that seems to have already been taking care of though

Sony partnered with Rackspace and in an earning call it was to "deploy openstack cloud". The thing with that is when you sign into your account, your friends list loads that happens on the cloud. Seeing how at Gamescom when Yoshida went from watching a match to being in it in 7 seconds including loading the game. That is really dang fast compared to how it is now.

It's also part of the PS3s issue because the RAM was allocated so they couldn't really improve there OS. The OS for the PS4 looks way better then the PS3. With that said it's really hard to tell based on what the PS3 does how the PS4 will perform. We have to wait and see.

@Malokevi PS+ is $50, and I like how you try and spin paying for ps+ as a bad thing while you "happily pay for xbox live." I agree on how the whole paywall argument is irrelevant if you already plan on paying for a service, but a paywall can be a game changer if you don't/can't pay for the online service. And as I stated in my previous comment, know ones knows how much xbl is changing as the 300,000 number is completely irrelevant. It could be a massive upgrade, or it could be a load of PR bull, but we'll find out eventually

It's not the first time I've seen someone say they mean virtual servers, but only ever in n4g comments. Given that azure also hosts office 365 and such, and 1billion was spent expanding an existing data centre for a single territory I find it plausible that they're referring to physical servers.

"The company has also confirmed that they aren’t 300,000 physical servers but virtualized cloud computing resources. Virtual servers means each physical server can host up to 1000 other servers or more with equal amount of resources."

It has been confirmed it is virtual machines/servers in an interview with Respawn by Eurogamer.

Digital Foundry: So you have server code in the cloud that all versions can access?

Drew McCoy: Our network engineer John Shiring wrote a really good article for our website, so you understand the basics of how it works. Based on demand in the region it'll spin up virtual machines and we have a package that has our server code in it that we can update whenever we need to, and it'll spin up an instance.

im talking about the apps netflix and other internet accesses. You must pay MS its not encouraging you to opt into Gold its demanding you! I dont have to sale my soul just to watch netflix. Netflix on Ps3/Ps4 8 bucks. Netflix on 360/one 68 bucks go pay MS you drone.